"Atlantic triangular trade" - texan translation of slave trading

[Al B. Sure!]

And this all strikes me as similar to how the Spartans went into battle with their helots. Blacks might have been forced to fight, they made the calculated decision that it's better to be a soldier than a slave, etc.

[SlowwHand]

Let's look at the small percentage that owned slaves. I won't say all slave owners treated their slaves decently, but at the very least, wouldn't you think that a man would take care of a tool? Nobody wanted them sick and dying. Again, we're just addressing the small percentage of the total South that you're fixated on, and I'm not saying slavery was proper. I vote with the 95%.

I'll tell you what's bad for you. If other states lift from Texas so much, you're going ot be hearing this same thing in your neighborhood. It's about time.
Rick Perry will be governor here yet again. Why? He rode the 10th Amendment horse into the ground. "It's SUPPOSED to keep them from messing with Texas."

[BeBMan]

95% of Wehrmacht soldiers didn't really want to conquer Europe or believe in the Master Race stuff... does that mean that the Nazis didn't fight for that reason?

Umm, try to find sources that give us sure insight into the thinking and intentions of 95% of Wehrmacht soldiers.

[Wezil]

Saying that only five to ten percent of people owned slaves kinda whitewashes the fact that more than three million human beings were enslaved in the South, and thus made up a substantial population of oppressed people.

It also masks the fact that slavery was the foundation of the Southern economy, and part of the reason for the Northern merchants' prosperity.

You did not have to be a slave owner to believe you had a stake in slavery and to preserve the racial status quo and white privilege.

"It wasn't about slavery"

Oh, please.

[Al B. Sure!]

Sloww:
The slave owner usually wasn't the problem. He had a financial stake in his slaves. Now the overseers were the whip-happy bastards...



That man was whipped by his overseer. Just as it's poor whites who were most attracted to the ideas of the Klan and Skinhead groups, poor whites, without slaves, were the most violently hateful. Just because they didn't own slaves didn't mean that they wouldn't fight tooth and nail to maintain slavery.

Ira Berlin wrote in Generations of Captivity

"In slave societies, nearly everyone – free and slave – aspired to enter the slaveholding class, and upon occasion some former slaves rose into slaveholders’ ranks"

Also,

In 1862 Georgian Congressman Warren Akin supported the enrolling of slaves with the promise of emancipation, as did the Alabama legislature. Support for doing so also grew in other Southern states. A few all black Confederate militia units, most notably the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, were formed in Louisiana at the start of the war, but were disbanded in 1862.[95] In early March, 1865, Virginia endorsed a bill to enlist black soldiers, and on March 13 the Confederate Congress did the same.[96]

There you go as to why there were Black Confederates. They were being promised freedom if they served. There's no way you can say that they therefore supported the South out of their own volition and were defending something besides slavery; they were defending the South in order to be free.

[Al B. Sure!]

And actually, it kind of doesn't matter what the hell reason the South was fighting the war for. It's clear what reason the North was fighting, especially after the Emancipation Proclamation.

The North fought to free the slaves; ergo, the Civil War was about freeing the slaves.

[MrFun]

Let's look at the small percentage that owned slaves. I won't say all slave owners treated their slaves decently, but at the very least, wouldn't you think that a man would take care of a tool? Nobody wanted them sick and dying. Again, we're just addressing the small percentage of the total South that you're fixated on, and I'm not saying slavery was proper. I vote with the 95%.

I'll tell you what's bad for you. If other states lift from Texas so much, you're going ot be hearing this same thing in your neighborhood. It's about time.
Rick Perry will be governor here yet again. Why? He rode the 10th Amendment horse into the ground. "It's SUPPOSED to keep them from messing with Texas."

I'd like to know where that website's author got those numbers of blacks fighting for the Confederacy. If I ask my professors from Eastern Illinois University about these figures, I am not sure if they would be able to validate the accuracy of the numbers.

And as for this bit that I've quoted, you're using the same argument that slave owners in the South used in the 1850s up to the Civil War - that they treated their slaves humanely. Which is simply bull****.

Denying a human being his/her freedom is not "taking care of them" - it's treating them like chattel.

[Wezil]

It's not easy to accept one's ancestors fought for an evil cause. I understand the revisionism.

[Al B. Sure!]

MrFun:

I quoted this from wikipedia.

In 1862 Georgian Congressman Warren Akin supported the enrolling of slaves with the promise of emancipation, as did the Alabama legislature. Support for doing so also grew in other Southern states. A few all black Confederate militia units, most notably the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, were formed in Louisiana at the start of the war, but were disbanded in 1862.[95] In early March, 1865, Virginia endorsed a bill to enlist black soldiers, and on March 13 the Confederate Congress did the same.

That's why there were Black Confederates. They were being promised freedom.

And just so you know, Sloww is right that there were a number of Black Confederates. Here's a good link which Sloww didn't post but is better and more informative than the ones he did:

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/blackcs.htm

"Black Confederate soldier depicted marching in rank with white Confederate soldiers. This is taken from the Confederate monument at Arlington National Cemetery. Designed by Moses Ezekiel, a Jewish Confederate erected in 1908. Ezekiel depicted the Confederate Army as he himself witnessed. As such, it is the one of the first monument, if not the first, honoring a black American soldier."

[Al B. Sure!]

as for the stat:

Where does this estimate of 65,000 come from ?

Dr. Steiner, Chief Inspector of the United States Sanitary Commission, observed that Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson's troops in occupation of Frederick, Maryland, in 1862: "Over 3,000 Negroes must be included in this number [Confederate troops]. These were clad in all kinds of uniforms, not only in cast-off or captured United States uniforms, but in coats with Southern buttons, State buttons, etc. These were shabby, but not shabbier or seedier than those worn by white men in the rebel ranks. Most of the Negroes had arms, rifles, muskets, sabers, bowie-knives, dirks, etc.....and were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederate Army."


If we assume Dr. Steiner is somewhat reliable and assume that this 3,000 Negroes of Jackson's troops are a representative number of black Confederates in a typical Confederate fighting force, then we may be able to make a rough calculation. First we must determine how many men were part of Jackson's troops ? If Lee had 50,000, was Jackson's force, 25,000 ? That would be a likely estimate. So then what percentage is 3,000 of 25,000 ? Answer: 12 %. So that would tell us that 12% of Jackson's force was black Confederates. Now, if we assume that Steiner meant 3,000 blacks soldiers in Lee's entire 50,000 force that crossed the Potomac, then the percentage of black Confederates is reduced to 6%. Either way it is calculated, black Confederates were a considerable percentage of the total Confederate fighting force.


To extend this reasoning across the entire Confederate Army, what does this represent ? That depends on the total number of men that served in the CS Army, which is also in itself debatable as muster rolls are notoriously incomplete.


For example, let's use for example the 1,000,000 listed names in Broadfoot's Confederate roster compiled by the National Archives. Yes, there is some repeat names, but let's use that figure as an example. What percentage is 12% ? This would translate to 120,000 black Confederates and half that, 60,000. As such, the 65,000 estimate is not an unreasonable estimate. Debatable ? Yes. Refutable ? Absolutely not. Black Confederates imaginary ? Ridiculous


Could Dr. Steiner have been wrong regarding the numbers ? Yes, absolutely. In fact, many Army officers routinely made mistakes at estimating the enemies numerical strengths. However, the smaller the body of troops one is estimating, the more likely that number is correct. While Steiner failed to accurately estimate Lee's total forces (I recall he estimated 80,000 instead of 50,000), in my opinion, it is unlikely he erred as significantly with a handful of 3,000 black troops. So even if Steiner made an overestimate of 30%, we still are in the range of 40,000 to 80,000

It's dumb logic going off a sanitation worker's half-assed guess of an observation and assuming it was representative of the whole Confederate Army.

Regardless, there could have been 1 million Black Confederates and it wouldn't have changed anything. Many of them were slaves, forced into serving, others were promised their freedom by serving, and a small few were freemen who possibly owned slaves themselves (or had other reasons to serve such as to not be seen as a Union supporter).

[Al B. Sure!]

Mr.Fun:

http://www.amazon.com/Confederates-Afro-Yankees-Virginia-Nation-Divided/dp/0813915457

The reviews are pretty bad though.

Jordan (the author of that book) said some of them were plain crazy. " Some of them were only looking out for themselves," he added. "Some of them were being pragmatic about where they were, especially free blacks. They felt if they demonstrated loyalty to the Confederacy that would keep them from being enslaved."

[Dinner]

A bigger question is how the new textbook will deal with the broader subject of slavery in the South, secession and the Civil War? Will it essentially skip over the issue of slavery or perhaps even have a little praise for kindly treatment of black people by their masters? Will it declare that "states rights" was the primary reason for secession? Will it blame the Union for the war?

The official education standards do all of the above. They claim slavery was not the main reason for the war, they claim states rights issues were, but the Confederate deceleration of independence widely sites slavery as the reason, the Confederate president and VP both stated in their inaugural speeches that slavery was the reason (they claimed northerners wanted to make white southerners slaves of black southerners) for succession, and slavery was the main propaganda issue for the south. Now that slavery is so discredited the southerners want to pretend the war was never about slavery but history proves other wise, the new text books white wash the issue and skip over it, they ignore reality and repeatedly claim there is no separation of church and state & claim that America was founded as a Christian nation all of which are lies. Hell, it even claims blacks liked being slaves because slave owners were so kind and benevolent to slaves. It's all just a lie.

That doesn't even count garbage like supporting McCarthyism, making excuses for McCarthyism, and claiming communists really were every where even though history proves other wise. It claims, contrary to all scientific evidence, that human driven climate change is fake, these textbooks are nothing more then political propaganda disguised as school books. They tossed out vast amounts written by real historians and put in vast amounts of pure partisan political garbage which is provably false.

[MrFun]

Thank you for the info, AS.

[MrFun]

Wait a minute, AS - I believe the monument that represents the black regiment that stormed Ft. Wagner was the first one to honor black soldiers; not the Confederate monument in Arlington Cemetery.

[OzzyKP]

What is the harm though in recognizing, like with most things in history, that there are multiple causes and multiple motivations? Clearly a number of Union soldiers (and leaders) fought to get rid of slavery, and a number fought just to preserve the union and didn't care at all about slavery. Likewise a number of Rebel soldiers (and leaders) fought for states rights and cared nothing about slavery. Recognizing that doesn't downplay the role that slavery played. A civil war wouldn't have been fought over tariffs, slavery was clearly the biggest factor, but not at all the only factor.